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SCA in WebSphere Application Server: Overview

Support for Service Component Architecture (SCA) offers a way to construct applications based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The support uses the Apache Tuscany open-source technology to provide an implementation of the published SCA specifications.

SCA is defined in a set of open specifications produced by IBM® and other industry leaders through the Open SOA Collaboration (OSOA).

You can use SCA to assemble and compose existing services in your enterprise. The key principle of SOA demonstrated by SCA support is the ability to use your existing services to create new ones.

Another key objective of SCA is to highlight the ease-of-use characteristics of SCA service development in Java. This is accomplished by demonstrating annotated Plain-Old Java-Object (POJO) components deployed using simple JAR packaging schemes, an easy to use assembly model, and wiring abstractions that enable service definition over different transports and protocols.

Benefits of SCA

SCA enables your organization to move quickly into the world of SOA, as follows:

Improve flexibility in application deployment
  • Adapt applications quickly to reflect changes in the business environment
  • Reuse the components you create in other business processes and composite applications
  • Easily compose services into more complex composite applications
  • Adjust solutions to accommodate varying technology offerings (that is, protocols or deployment targets) without the need to rebuild business applications
Increase programmer productivity
  • Stay focused on solving business problems, rather than getting bogged down in the individual complexities of the technologies that connect service consumers and service providers
  • Use the same fundamental principles to uniformly represent existing assets and newly engineered components
  • Organize service components into logical modules to hasten composite application development
  • Leverage the loosely coupled service model with clear service definitions to enable developers to work independently and in parallel, for fast delivery of solutions

OSOA support

SCA in WebSphere® Application Server follows the definition of the technology as documented by OSOA. Defining a set of compliance test suites was not part of the OSOA charter, so the implementation provided in this product uses the following specifications as guiding principles. However, IBM provides an implementation that adheres strictly to our interpretation of the specifications.

See the "Unsupported SCA specifications sections" topic for restrictions and limitations that are unsupported at this time.

WebSphere support for SCA

As already noted, multiple specifications are defined at OSOA, as well as Tuscany extensions provided in open source that go beyond the basic mission of WebSphere Application Server. Each vendor can decide which aspects of SCA apply to their product. For WebSphere Application Server, the focus is on enabling compositions as services, Java components, and integration of key qualities of service-like transactions and security.

SCA can enable mediations, business rules, and business process execution language to be treated as any other service, and while WebSphere Application Server provides the mechanisms to wire services that are implemented in those languages and environments, the product does not provide native support to host those kinds of service implementations.

SCA support includes the following:
  • POJO (Java Object) service-component implementations, including support for annotations
  • Asynchronous capability
  • Recursive composition model support
  • Support for SCA specifications
  • Support for SCA services developed from existing WSDL files or Java code
  • Deployment of SCA composites in business-level applications
  • SCA authorization and security identity policies
  • PassByReference optimization for SCA applications
  • Several binding types, including web services binding, SCA default binding, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Java Message Service (JMS), Atom, and HTTP bindings
  • Support for Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) data bindings in SCA applications
  • SCA annotations for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) web modules, session beans, and message-driven beans
  • Preview of native SCA deployment
  • Spring 2.5.5 containers in SCA applications
  • OSGi applications as SCA implementations
  • Service Data Objects 2.1.1
  • Sample SCA composites compiled specifically for use with the product



Subtopics
Unsupported SCA specification sections
SCA components
SCA composites
SCA contributions
SCA domain
Related tasks
Samples, Version 8.0 information center
Developing SCA services from existing WSDL files
Developing SCA services with existing Java code
Developing SCA service clients
Specifying bindings in an SCA environment
Using JAXB for XML data binding
Using existing Java EE modules and components as SCA implementations
Using Spring 2.5.5 containers in SCA applications
Using SCA authorization and security identity policies
Using PassByReference optimization in SCA applications
Deploying and administering business-level applications
Related reference
Specifications and API documentation
Concept topic Concept topic    

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Last updatedLast updated: Feb 6, 2014 8:11:25 PM CST
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